2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十一月-This I Believe: There Is No God（在线收听）

Steve Inskeep: This is morning edition from NPR news. I'm Steve Inskeep.

Renee Montagne: And I'm Renee Montagne.

I believe in honor, faith and service
I belive that a little outrage can take you...
I believe in freedom of speech
I believe in empathy
I believe in truth
I believe in the ingredients of love

Steve Inskeep: This I Believe.

Renee Montagne: On Mondays we bring you our revival of the 1950 series, this I believe, this moring we hear from Penn Jillette, half of the magic and comedy team Penn and Teller. He is most readily identified as the bigger one who talks. He is also executive producer of the movie, the Aristocrats, and is the H.L. Mencken research fellow at the Cato Institute. Here is our series curator, independent producer Jay Alison.

Jay Alison: When working with her essayists, we quote the guidelines of the original "this I believe" team, refrain from saying what you do not believe, they were as we are, interested in affirmative statements, Penn Jillette took aside our word and being clever with his words, found the way to express the absence of belief as a personal credo. Here is Penn Jillette with his essay, for this I Believe.

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Jay Alison: Penn Jillette, with his essay, for this I believe. As always, we hope our series inspires you to think about what you believe and to write down your thoughts in 500 words, for information about submitting your writing and to find all the essays we've aired so far, please visit our website at NPR.org, you can also call 202-408-0300. For this I believe, I'm Jay Alison.

Renee Montagne: Next week, in this I believe essay from Illinois professor and journalist John Fountain who found a belief in God.

Steve Inskeep: This I believe is made possible by a grant from Farmers Insurance.